


These are the days of miracle and wonder

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: What Has Been Wrought [2]
Category: Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of trauma, Bullying, Dinosaurs, Dreams, Gen, Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom spoilers!, Post-Movie: Jurassic World 2, School, Schoolyard fights, Social Dynamics, Sort of? - Freeform, Spoilers!, also found family I guess?, instincts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 16:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15123560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: (SPOILERs for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom!)Maisie was good at surviving.Livingwas much harder.





	These are the days of miracle and wonder

**Author's Note:**

> You seriously need to read the first fic in this series to understand this one.

** These are the days of miracle and wonder **

In the months that followed the near-complete collapse of Maisie’s life, dinosaur attacks in the media became the new norm.

Some of them were by predatory dinosaurs – _attacks_ in the real sense of the word, where people were killed and sometimes eaten. But some of the other so-called ‘attacks’ were dinosaurs simply being dinosaurs. Cars were stepped on, buildings were damaged, public parks were filled with grazing herbivores. Sometimes dinosaurs were panicked by the noise and the dazzling bright lights that accompanied human living spaces, and people got trampled as the dinosaurs attempted to get away from the distraction and chaos.

By now, the media had seized on the story of what had happened at the Lockwood Estate. _MURDER, MAYHEM AND DINOSAURS!_ had said one newspaper headline. So far, the media had settled the blame for the dinosaurs squarely on Mr Mills’ greed. No one else had wanted any of the blame to land on them, so they’d all been happy to pin everything on a dead man. Maisie couldn’t find it in her heart to feel bad about it. But– 

This was what people were really like, Maisie thought. She had to remember that. Iris might tell her to look for the best in people, and Maisie _would_ , but she would also remember to expect the worst until she found that best. 

Iris had called her a little cynic for saying that, her expression wistful and sad, the way she always looked when one of them made reference to what Maisie had gone through. But Maisie knew, now, that if you didn’t expect the worst, it left you vulnerable. And Maisie was determined to be a survivor.

“Maisie, dear, don’t read those,” Iris had said, when she caught Maisie reading the newspaper articles or watching the news stories on TV. Maisie just ignored her, because she had to know what was going on.

It had been Maisie who had let the dinosaurs out into the world, rather than let them die. Everything that happened after that was her fault, and Maisie would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life. But in the end, there was no other choice she could have made.

_ We be of one blood, ye and I _ , she’d said to Midnight, and that was still true. There was a kinship between her and the dinosaurs which she could never deny.

She’d had a talk with Midnight and Blue, the night before she’d returned to human civilisation and walked into the police station to tell people what had happened at the mansion. 

“You can’t hunt humans unless they hunt you first,” Maisie had said quietly, while Midnight looked at her with bright eyes, and listened.

Blue didn’t understand most of what Maisie said, unless Maisie was speaking raptor-speak, but Midnight understood every word. Blue was more a creature of instinct than Maisie was, but Midnight was capable of thinking things through and planning them to achieve a particular objective. He had instincts too, of course, strong ones; but they didn’t control him as much as Blue’s did her. 

Maisie had even wondered, once, if Midnight had some human genes in him. It would explain the way his intelligence manifested, and that expression he had of almost-smiling. After all, if Maisie could have some dinosaur in her, why not a dinosaur with some human in them?

“The thing about humans is that there are so many of us,” Maisie had went on, trying to explain to Midnight. 

For all his intelligence, Maisie had realised by then that like her, Midnight was still pretty young, and he’d spent his entire life in captivity. There were things he simply didn’t understand. 

“And with technology, humans can talk to any other human anywhere. If you hunt humans, other humans will come to hunt you – and there are so many of us that no matter how many you kill, there will always be more, and eventually they will find a way to kill you. There are so many humans that you can’t count them – but there’s only one of you, and one of Blue. You’re outnumbered.”

Midnight had indicated his scepticism.

“It’s true,” Maisie had told him. “Humans might be soft and small, but we build technology to fight with instead of teeth and claws. You haven’t had problems with humans before, because you’re bigger and faster and more dangerous–” and Midnight had smiled, “but that’s because they didn’t realised how smart you really were. They weren’t prepared. But the hunters will be prepared, and they’ll learn from the mistakes of everyone you hunt before they come for you.”

Maisie had looked up into Midnight’s face, trying to make him understand how serious she was.

“I don’t want them to kill you,” she’d said. “Hunt anything but humans. It’s different if they come after you first, but if they leave you alone, you leave them alone. Okay?” 

Midnight had snorted.

“I mean it,” had said Maisie. “Stay in the forest, away from the humans. Hunt the other animals – there’s plenty of deer in the forests here. But humans are too dangerous. One human isn’t; five, ten humans aren’t; but hundreds or thousands of humans are dangerous. They swarm you, like the bees in that nest we found.”

Midnight hadn’t liked the bees. He’d torn open the nest to see what it was, even though Maisie had said that he shouldn’t. She and Midnight had been forced to flee as the bees had swarmed over them in attack, protecting the nest. Blue, who was some distance away, had laughed at both of them. But the incident had left Midnight with a grudging respect for bees.

Mention of the bees had given Midnight pause. Finally, reluctantly, he’d nodded, and Maisie had rubbed the side of her face against his snout.

It had been their last night together as a pack. Even thought Maisie had only been with him and Blue for a week, Maisie missed Midnight like it was some vital part of herself that was missing. She missed her Grandpa in the same way, only even more so.

It was another reason why she followed the dinosaur attacks in the news – she kept an eye out for any descriptions of attacks that might be by Midnight, or Blue. But so far, it seemed, they’d been following Maisie’s instructions and staying away from humanity, because Maisie hadn’t heard anything about either of them.

Maisie was glad, of course; but she would also have loved to catch a glimpse of her pack, and know that they were okay.

* * *

Maisie started school in the fall. On her first day, a photographer managed to snap a photo of her as she got out of the private car and entered the school gates. He ran off before the school’s security could catch him. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Before classes began that day there was an address to the new students by the school principal, who spoke about turning out young women with integrity who would make a difference in the world, before she sent them all off to their first lesson.

When the teacher called Maisie’s name, a wave of whispers went through the room, and it seemed like the entire class was staring at her. 

Everyone at school had heard of Maisie, thanks to the media coverage of her Grandpa’s murder and the disaster at the mansion. The second day of school Maisie’s face was all over the media thanks to the photographer from the day before, with Maisie herself described as _the_ _mysterious Lockwood heiress_. 

(Iris booked Maisie in for a hair cut later that day, and Maisie’s hair was now bobbed, with bangs. Iris said it made her look less like her mother, and Maisie understood that the hair cut was for her own protection – so that when people looked at her, the word _clone_ never so much as crossed their minds.)

Maisie swiftly discovered that notoriety was not the same thing as popularity, and thanks to her reclusive upbringing, she had no idea how to make friends. She tried, but… none of the other girls seemed to care about dinosaurs like Maisie did, and they’d never heard of the books which Maisie had read in the library at the mansion, and they talked about people and songs and TV shows that Maisie didn’t know.

It made Maisie feel very alone.

At least Maisie was a day-student instead of a boarder, which meant she went back to the apartment she shared with Iris every afternoon, instead of living at the school all the time. It meant she could get away from the whispers, the pitying looks and the expressions of bored incomprehension that she got whenever she tried to talk about what she knew, which was usually facts about dinosaurs or science or nature. 

(Maisie had never been allowed to watch much TV – _reading broadens the mind, while television rots it away_ , her Grandpa had said more than once. Iris let Maisie watch a little TV these days, like _Doctor Who_ , but nothing like what the other girls watched when they were at home. Some of them even had Netflix, whatever that was. People had laughed when Maisie had asked, so she didn’t ask questions like that, anymore).

Maisie soon learned that it was best if she stayed quiet, and didn’t say much to the other girls. But nothing stopped her from listening in to the conversations around her. In their own way, those conversations were just as educational as the classes Maisie took. She was beginning to realise that while she knew a lot of things, she didn’t know much about being an ordinary girl her age. And if she didn’t want people to realise there was something _different_ about her (that was how Iris phrased it, whenever she talked about Maisie’s raptor heritage) then she needed to learn to fit in better.

“Being different isn’t a bad thing,” said Iris, when Maisie shared her realisation. “But I agree that it would be best if no one questions the nature of your existence.”

After that, Iris had Maisie begin deportment classes after school once a week – things like how to talk politely, which cutlery to use if you were at a fancy dinner, and everything else that was involved in being a _young lady._

Maisie hated those classes, but she understood their necessity. Only once did she lose her temper over them.

“I’m a dinosaur, not a young lady!” she’d shouted at Iris – in the privacy of their own apartment, fortunately, where there was no one to overhear. Iris had looked as though she’d been slapped.

She sat Maisie down for a talk, but instead of the scolding Maisie expected, Iris’ voice was gentle.

“I know that this is all very hard for you,” she said. “But you do understand why it’s important, don’t you?”

Maisie nodded, her eyes prickling.

“Then you must simply do the best you can,” said Iris. “It may not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. But as long as you try, I will be proud of you.”

Maisie hugged her. After a moment of startled stiffness, Iris hugged her back.

Two days after that, a group of girls cornered Maisie in the far end of the school courtyard, where Maisie liked to eat her lunch.

“Hey, you,” said the leader, who Maisie knew from careful observation. Her name was Margot Blackwell, and she was a bully. “Girl who talks about dinosaurs all the time. I want to talk to you.”

Maisie sat in utter stillness, and watched the girls in front of her with unblinking eyes.

Margot didn’t seem to notice the way her allies-of-convenience shifted uneasily and averted their gazes under the effect of Maisie’s stare.

“That’s a nice bracelet you’re wearing,” said Margot. Maise could tell that Margot was used to people doing what she said. “You’re going to give it to me.” 

Maisie said nothing. Didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Her breathing was slow and even.

“Patricia’s really good at leaving bruises where no one will see,” said Margot, while Maisie sat there and catalogued the way the group stood, the way they moved around each other. “And _my_ Dad’s so rich everyone does as he says. So give it up, dinosaur girl.”

Maisie put her lunch down on the bench where she was sitting, and stood up. Her eyes shifted to the biggest girl in the group, who was broad-shouldered and tall. Taller than Maisie.

Maisie still didn’t say a word.

“Well?” Margot demanded. When Maisie continued saying nothing, Margot nodded her head sharply. “Patricia – do it.”

The tall girl grinned nastily, and stepped forward.

Maisie leapt.

Later, when the onlookers were asked by their friends to describe what had happened at that end of the courtyard, none of them could say, exactly. All they knew was that one moment Maisie had been standing and staring at Patricia; but within a blink, Patricia was on the ground, with Maisie crouched on her chest and the tip of Maisie’s shiny black shoe pressed against the most vulnerable part of Patricia’s throat.

“I survived dinosaurs and the man who murdered my Grandpa,” said Maisie, into the silence. “You think you scare me?”

They were all called into the principal’s office.

“She was trying to steal from me,” said Maisie, to the assembled adults.

“Why would Miss Blackwell steal from you?” asked the principal, looking at Maisie with a grave expression. 

“Because she thinks it’s fun,” said Maisie, who had learned a lot while being quiet and not talking to anyone. People forgot she was there, sometimes. It could be incredibly useful.

“I’ve seen her with the younger girls,” Maisie added. “She makes them give up whatever’s important to them, or else Patricia beats them up where the bruises are hidden under their clothes. She has them all so scared that they do anything she says. They might not tell you the truth even if you ask, but I can give you their names.”

“Please do,” said the principal, her expression graver than ever.

So Maisie did, while Margot stared daggers at her.

The principal sent Maisie and Margot to sit on separate chairs in the hallway outside her office, and had each of the girls Maisie had named brought in for gentle questioning. Some of them denied everything, but Maisie’s sensitive hearing picked up each time one of them confirmed Margot’s bullying, their voices shaky, relief and fear present in their tone. A couple of the really young girls even burst into tears at the first probing questions.

In the end, Margot’s Mom was called in, and was asked to quietly withdraw her daughter from the school, as Margot was _unable to uphold the school’s values_.

Maisie closed her eyes, and wondered if life was always going to be this difficult to navigate. If people would always be this difficult to deal with.

Iris was called in, and the situation explained to her.

“While I understand Miss Lockwood’s refusal to allow the theft and bullying,” said the principal, each gentle word falling like a rock, “her own response to Miss Blackwell was not of the kind which is tolerated at this school.”

“But surely–” Iris began.

“That is why,” said the principal, without acknowledging Iris’ words in any way, “she is being subject to three days suspension, and we are strongly recommending that Miss Lockwood see a psychologist. I understand that she has been through some traumatic events – but that does not excuse her poor behaviour.”

“What was I supposed to _do?_ ” Maisie blurted out, before Iris could stop her. “It’s not like you have classes teaching us how to deal with these things! You just pretend they never happen!”

The principal looked at Maisie for a moment. Then she looked back at Iris.

“I understand,” said Iris, with a sigh. “Do you happen to have a child psychologist that you could recommend?”

Maisie sulked all the way home: about the suspension, about having to see a psychologist, and about Iris apparently agreeing with the principal.

“Would you rather have been expelled?” Iris asked her sharply, apparently sick of Maisie’s sulking.

“No.”

“Then be grateful this is all the punishment you will be receiving.”

The first day, Maisie stayed locked in her room, only coming out for dinner. She stayed silent and sullen all the way through the meal, before returning to her room.

She lay in bed for at least an hour after she was meant to be asleep, thinking about how things had been so much more simple, when she was with Midnight and Blue. Then she pulled out the laptop computer she had for school, and began googling.

The next morning, when the sky was still dark and long before Iris was due to wake, Maisie put on a pair of khaki pants, a dark green shirt, and black shoes and socks. A green hat went over her head, her bobbed hair tucked up inside it. Maisie’s backpack was all greens and browns, in a camouflage pattern. Iris had sighed, when Maisie had insisted that was the backpack she wanted, but had bought it for her anyway.

Maisie packed it with a flashlight, a wallet full of money she’d saved from various shopping trips, her pocket-knife, a transparent rain poncho, and some of the non-perishable foods from the kitchen cupboards. Then she sneaked out of the apartment, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and slipped out into the darkness.

She was on a bus by the time the early dawn light began peeking through the clouds.

It took two days by bus and through hitching lifts with sympathetic strangers who believed the sad story she’d spun before Maisie reached the Lockwood Estate. Maisie hiked up the long road that led to where the mansion had once been situated. 

Where it had stood, there was nothing but a burnt-out hole in the ground. Maisie stood there for a moment, mourning her Grandpa and the life she’d lived, before. Then she turned towards the nearest stretch of forest, and began walking.

Every so often, Maisie let out a cough-like bark, which echoed through the trees. By mid-afternoon she was starting to feel tired, and beginning to wonder if this trip had been pointless.

But then there was an answering bark of greeting, louder and sharper than Maisie’s own, and Maisie grinned and broke into a run.

A large dark shape loomed up out of the undergrowth, and Maisie stopped and waited as Midnight scented the air in her direction.

Then he smiled, and lowered himself down onto all fours, and Maisie rushed forward to rub the side of her face against his snout. Midnight did the same to her, nearly bowling her over with his enthusiasm.

Laughing, Maisie settled into the space between his front legs.

“I missed you so much,” she told him.

…and that was when Maisie woke up, her pillow soaked with the tears she’d shed in her sleep.

For months now she’d been having dreams like this about her Grandpa, but this was the first time she’d dreamed of Midnight. Maisie lay in bed and cried until there were no more tears left to cry. She felt into an exhausted sleep sometime after that.

The next day Iris took a look at Maisie’s pale face and wan expression, and decided that they were going to visit a public park.

Maisie brought her backpack along, with a book packed inside it. Iris brought a picnic basket. The car dropped them off at the park together, and Iris gave the driver instructions to return to the same place in three hours time.

Maisie had forgotten, almost, how it felt to be outside around plants and trees and dirt. Ignoring Iris’ calls for her to slow down, Maisie sprinted across the grass and through the decorative stone arches, and finally came to a stop under some enormous trees.

Maisie looked up. Before Iris could do more than enter the clearing, Maisie took off her shoes and began to climb. By the time Iris reached the spot where Maisie had flung her shoes, Maisie was a third of the way up the tree, and perched in a forking of branches, looking out at the horizon.

“Maisie! Get down from there!” Iris yelled up, but when Maisie ignored her, Iris spread out the blanket and began unpacking the picnic basket.

There was a strong breeze, up in the tree where Maisie sat, which brought with it all kinds of strange, wild scents. Maisie inhaled through her nose, breathing them all in. It wasn’t the same as being in the forest with her pack, but… it was better than nothing.

Maisie stayed in the tree for a good half-hour before she finally climbed down again, and sat with Iris on the blanket to eat her lunch. By then, Maisie had lost some of the ache in her heart to the sense of peace that accompanied the experience of being amid the grass and the wind and the trees.

After lunch, Maisie and Iris went for a walk through the park. When they reached the concourse, there were food trucks and a place where you could hire bicycles. Maisie pestered Iris until she agreed to hire a bike for her. Maisie spent the rest of the afternoon trying to ride the bike across the grass. She fell over dozens of times, but eventually, she picked up the knack of it, and rode the bike in circles around Iris until Iris told her to stop being silly. 

It was all a matter of balance, Maisie thought, as she rode the bike down one of the walking paths, Iris following behind with the blanket and the picnic basket.

Before Maisie knew it, it was time to leave.

“Well, I hope that you enjoyed yourself,” said Iris in the car, on the journey back to their apartment building.

Maisie looked idly out at the skyscrapers around them.

“I really did,” she murmured. “Can we go the park again, sometime?”

“I think so,” said Iris. “It obviously does you good to burn off some of that energy. Look at you, actually sitting still, for once.”

Maisie spent the rest of the week in the apartment, either reading or doing the homework she’d been assigned, before her suspension. But she felt far more restful than she had before her visit to the park, and she thought that Iris was right: it had done her good, even if it was for different reasons than Iris thought.

* * *

Maisie went back to school on the Monday, and to her astonishment, she found that everything had changed.

_ Everyone_ had heard about her altercation with Margot Blackwell by now, as well as Margot’s expulsion and Maisie’s suspension. All of a sudden, the people who had picked on Maisie for going on about dinosaurs gave her a wide berth, and other people who’d never given who a second glance wanted to be her _friend_. It was all very bewildering. 

Maisie found herself joined by a girl called Alison during lunch, out by her spot in the courtyard. Maisie eyed her sidelong, and finally decided to just _ask_.

“Why are you sitting with me?” Maisie said aloud. 

“Do you want me to go sit somewhere else?” the other girl asked, sounding disappointed.

“It’s not that,” said Maisie. “It’s just, you’ve never sat with me before, and all of a sudden everyone who ignored me wants to be my friend, and I don’t understand _why_.”

Alison blinked at her.

“Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but honestly, I like dinosaurs too,” Alison admitted. “When we first met, I thought that maybe we could be friends. But then you stopped talking about dinosaurs, or about anything at all really, and let everyone say mean things about you, and I didn’t want people treating _me_ like that because I was friends with you.”

Maisie tilted her head, regarding the other girl.

“So what changed?”

“Then you stood up to Margot, of course,” said Alison, as though it was obvious. “Is it true that you actually beat up Patricia?”

Maisie shrugged noncommittally. 

“Wow,” said Alison, regarding her with some admiration. “But she was so much bigger than you are!”

Maisie thought about pointing out that Patricia was a spoiled rich girl who had never met a true opponent in her life, let alone someone with the instincts of a genuine predator. But she didn’t. Instead, she only shrugged a second time.

“Fighting is easy. Talking to people is hard. I never know what to say. When I was younger, it was just me and Grandpa and Iris – and _Mr Mills_ ,” Maisie added reluctantly, with some disgust.

Alison looked sympathetic.

“I heard about him. It was all over the internet, what he did. I’m sorry about your Grandpa.”

Maisie swallowed, and didn’t say anything. But Alison seemed to understand. After a moment of silence, she changed the subject.

“My favourite dinosaur is archaeopteryx, because it’s so interesting. What’s yours?”

“Raptors,” said Maisie, without even thinking about it.

Alison frowned.

“Isn’t a raptor some kind of bird?”

“I meant a velociraptor,” said Maisie. “But the dinosaur experts all call them raptors for short. I saw one,” she said, and then stopped herself, before she could say anything else.

Alison leaned forward, her expression bright and eager.

“Wait, you’ve seen _real dinosaurs?_ ” she said, and so Maisie explained about how Mr Mills was keeping them in a secret basement at the mansion, locked away in cages.

“He was trying to sell them, but then they got out, and ate him,” said Maisie.

Alison shook her head.

“That’s terrible,” she said, and then, “I wish _I’d_ gotten to see real dinosaurs. I always wanted to go to Jurassic World, but then the disaster happened before I was old enough.” She scowled. “Dad says it would have been too expensive anyway, just to go and look at animals. He says visiting a zoo would be cheaper, and it’s just the same. But I would have _loved_ to go there.” 

Maisie thought about an entire island of dinosaurs, roaming around the closest thing they had to a natural habitat.

“Me too,” she said.

Maisie and Alison spent the rest of their lunch break sitting together and chatting. Both of them were in the same math class on Monday afternoons, and Alison sat with Maisie then, too. It was… _nice_ , Maisie thought.

“I think I made a friend today,” said Maisie to Iris, when she got home. 

Iris looked up from the crossword she was doing.

“Is that so?”

So Maisie told Iris all about Alison and the conversation they’d had, and the way they’d sat together in math. Alison had even let Maisie borrow her eraser.

“Of course your new friend is interested in dinosaurs,” said Iris, but she was smiling, and so Maisie smiled back, and agreed with her.

During her first visit to the psychologist later that week, Maisie was asked about her friends.

“I’ve never really had any friends, before,” said Maisie, kicking her feet back and forth as she sat. Sitting still had always been difficult for her. “Grandpa never really let me leave the mansion… he was scared something would happen to me, I think. But I never met anyone else my age until I went to school.”

“That must have been difficult,” said the psychologist. Maisie nodded.

“It was. But now I’m friends with Alison, I think, and everyone is nicer to me since I wouldn’t let Margot’s gang beat me up or steal my bracelet.”

“Tell me about that,” said the psychologist, and so Maisie did.

She talked about a lot of other things, too, from how it felt now that her Grandpa was gone and she would never see him again, to the fact that Mr Mills had turned out to be such a traitor. But she never mentioned Midnight and Blue, and she never said anything about her raptor DNA. Iris had told her not to, and Maisie knew enough about people, now, to understand why.

She’d seen how people were treating the dinosaurs that had escaped, after all. Creatures of majesty and wonder and had turned into something to be feared and hunted down, and Maisie was afraid that if people knew what she was made of, they’d do the same to her.

“I feel bad for the dinosaurs,” she told the psychologist, even though they hadn’t been talking about dinosaurs at all, a moment ago. “They just want to live. It’s not their fault that the world has changed. They don’t deserve to die.”

The psychologist was listening, and so Maisie explained further.

“Everyone says that we made them, so we can do what we like with them. But once they’re made, they’re living things. We don’t control them – they’re not robots we can tell what to do by pressing a button. They’ll do what they have to so they can survive. Everything that lives has a right to life, and just because we gave the dinosaurs life doesn’t mean we have a right to take it away.”

The psychologist made a note on her notepad. Maisie tried to read it upside-down, but the handwriting was too loopy for her to make out all the letters, and she gave up.

“My Grandpa–” Maisie stopped as her voice wavered, took a deep breath, and started again. “My Grandpa wanted to put the dinosaurs in a sanctuary. Not a theme park, for everyone to stare at, but somewhere they would be safe. Somewhere no one could go, and somewhere none of the dinosaurs could escape from.”

“You don’t think that the dinosaurs are dangerous?” asked the psychologist. 

Maisie let out an explosive sigh.

“That’s not the point. Of course they’re dangerous. Most animals are dangerous, if you take them away from where they live and put them where humans are, because that’s not how they’re supposed to live. I read once that if you save someone’s life, it becomes your responsibility, and that’s what dionsaurs should be – not something to control and make money from, but something we’re responsible for.”

Maisie gave a sigh, and went right on talking.

“There was a man on the TV who said that the dinosaurs lived long before us, and if we’re not careful, they’ll live long after us. He said that’s why we should have left them on the island. But that’s exactly why we should respect them and try to learn from them. They were here for one hundred and seventy-seven _million_ years: modern humans have been here for two hundred _thousand_. Even if you include our ancestors, that only makes us about three million years old. Dinosaurs are the most efficient kind of animal that’s ever existed – including us.”

“But what about the people they’ve hurt or killed?” asked the psychologist. Maisie thought for a long moment, and finally settled on an honest answer.

“We’re all just trying to survive. Can we blame the dinosaurs for doing the same?”

“Hmm,” said the psychologist, and made more notes. Then she sent Maisie back into the waiting room, and called Iris in to talk to her before she and Maisie went home.

That night Maisie dreamed that she was back in the mansion, sitting by her Grandpa’s bed. 

“I hear you’ve been having some problems,” her Grandpa said, and even though this was the first thing she’d heard him say, it was as though they’d already had a long conversation, and this was just the newest topic for them to talk about.

“I’m just trying to survive,” Maisie told him. 

“Well, maybe it’s about time you stopped trying to survive, and started living,” her Grandpa replied, and Maisie woke up with his voice ringing in her ears.

It was the first time she’d woken from a dream featuring her Grandpa without discovering that her face was wet with tears. This time, her eyes and face were dry.

Maisie stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom for a long time, and pondered her dream-Grandpa’s words.


End file.
